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Paul Ryan: The Rosie Ruiz of American politics

By now you have probably heard that Rep. Paul Ryan lied about his marathon time during an interview last week with right-wing radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Ryan said he used to run marathons before he “hurt a disc in [his] back,” and that he had once run a marathon in “two hour and fifty-something.” Runners World, being that they are a magazine focused on all things running, decided to check this out. What they found was that Ryan had indeed run a marathon once, but he finished in a time that was over an hour slower than what he had said during the radio interview.

Now, his official finishing time of 4:01 is nothing to sneeze at. It’s certainly faster than both of the marathons I’ve done. There would have been no shame in saying, “Yeah, I ran a marathon once and I did okay.” But such an admission clearly didn’t fall in line with Ryan’s concept of himself as a modern-day Adam Smith with washboard abs, so he embellished. A lot.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that you can call what he did “lying,” although his campaign is saying he “misspoke.” To which I – and millions of other runners – say: bullshit. There is a world of difference between running 26.2 miles at a 9:10-per-mile pace and what he claimed to have run, which is a 6:40-per-mile pace. If you don’t think so, then I challenge you to go run a mile in 9:10 and then run a mile in 6:40 and come back and tell me that again.

When I first heard about Paul Ryan’s fake marathon time, I instantly thought of Rosie Ruiz. It turns out, so did Paul Krugman at the New York Times, so I’ll let him summarize her for you:

Remember Rosie Ruiz? In 1980 she was the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon — except it turned out that she hadn’t actually run most of the race, that she sneaked onto the course around a mile from the end. Ever since, she has symbolized a particular kind of fraud, in which people claim credit for achieving things they have not, in fact, achieved.

Ruiz, like Ryan, tried to pull this off even though her deception could – and was – easily uncovered. Ruiz crossed the finish line without a drop of sweat on her body and she couldn’t recall her intervals or her split times. None of the other runners recall seeing her around mile 17 or 18, the Wellesley students who traditionally cheer like maniacs for the leading female runner didn’t see her, and two Harvard students said they saw her burst out of the crowd about a half-mile toward the end.

Ruiz and Ryan weren’t satisfied with just fudging their numbers to make themselves seem a little better than they actually were. No, they had to make themselves seem like preternaturally gifted athletes who possess gifts which most of us will never attain no matter how hard we work. They couldn’t just be a little bit better than themselves; they had to be better than everyone else, too.

So why is this a big deal? It’s a big deal because it shows just how comfortable Paul Ryan is with dishonesty. It shows how little he cares about the truth, especially when the truth tarnishes his golden-boy image. He can toss off such an egregious lie with seemingly little concern for the fact that it can be so easily disproven, and it makes you wonder what else the guy is lying about. (Evidently he’s lying about a lot, as evidenced by the armies of fact-checkers who worked themselves into a frenzy over his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.)

Not only that, but it makes him seem small and petty and breathtakingly immature. As my husband put it, all he needs to know about Paul Ryan is that he’s the kind of guy who lies about running a 2:50 marathon. Strip away the politics and think about Paul Ryan as a guy in your office. No one would defend this guy, and why should they? He’s a fool, a liar, a self-aggrandizer. He thinks he is smarter than everyone else. He’s pretty much the worst guy ever, and no one wants to work with him lest he lie about doing his part and take credit for the whole thing.

In the case of Ruiz, she proved that her faux Boston win was not a fluke, considering that she was arrested two years later for embezzling $60,000 from her employer. It makes sense – anyone who feels comfortable telling such an egregious, public lie in one aspect of their life is sure to feel comfortable telling smaller, less disprovable ones in other areas of their lives.

Can I tell you what else bothers me about this? I mean, besides the fact that a politician I don’t like was busted in a lie, which happens just about every single day. What really bothers me about this is that it is so antithetical to the spirit of running as I know it. Running is about competing against previous versions of yourself. It’s about working hard and training and putting in the time to become a stronger runner than you once were. Your health, your strength of heart and mind, your perseverance – these are not qualities that appear the moment you cross the finish line, but are instead the cumulative effect of all of the miles you ran leading up to the finish line.

When you lie about your performance, you have cheated yourself out of all the very real and powerful benefits of being a runner, just for the sake of a moment of glory. And what a cheap moment it is, too, because in the darkest corners of your heart, you will always know the truth. You may succeed in fooling everyone else, but you will always know the truth about yourself and the kind of person you are.

Paul Ryan could have used running as a means to become a better version of himself. Instead he chose that false moment of glory, and in the process showed all of us exactly the kind of person he truly is.

I have, and yeah, it blows my mind. I mean, people are impressed as it is by anyone who even FINISHES a marathon. The average person doesn’t care that you ran it fast. They are just blown away that you did it at all! There’s something else going on that I really don’t understand.

That’s precisely what I was thinking. For the instant I knew that Paul Ryan had run a marathon but didn’t yet know that he’d lied about his time, I thought better of him. (Not in ways relevant to my voting decisions, but still.) Even if he’d finished in, say, 9 hours and 27 minutes and then said he finished in 9 hours and 27 minutes — there would have been way more integrity in making that statement than there was in what he actually did.

Your point about knowing he had run a marathon making you think better of him for a second is really interesting, because it reminds me of when I learned that Sarah Palin was a runner and that she had played basketball in high school. It made me feel a bit of kinship with her, even though our politics are so very far apart, like we could have at least something in common. But the fact that Ryan lied about his time just destroys the potential for any sense of affinity that might have developed. It’s just crappy all around.

Ryan lying about his marathon time should really piss off everyone that spent hour after hour of training so that they could simply finish. Perhaps it’s a trivial fact but it says a lot about the character, or lack of character of Paul “Rosie” Ryan. It also shows that Paul “Rosie” Ryan is a pathological liar.

If I embellished that much on my times, I’d be a world record holder in the 10K, and my time wouldn’t be too far behind the men’s fastest! Joking aside, it is worrisome that some people excuse this or act as if lying about a marathon time is no big deal. I’m wondering if he actually thought he could get away with stretching the truth to the point of absurdity. Maybe he was so caught up in trying to fit a role that he didn’t think that far ahead, but it’s not a good sign if a potential VP can’t think of the action-consequences link and will blurt out anything to look good in a given moment.

Just started following your blog (tipped off by a friend) and I’m glad I did. You definitely articulated what’s been bothering me about this–I haven’t been running very long but I love the spirit of it, the personal accomplishment, and he just knocked that on its head.

I’ve been reading your blog since the Olympics pieces you wrote last month. This post is superb, and not just because our politics appear to generally agree. It points out a basic problem with the folks that dominate the political landscape at the national level; an inability to accept that they might ever be wrong about something. Thus, the ability to prevaricate even in the face of easy fact-schecking. There’s a certain mania to it all. It’s all the more ironic considering Ryan’s political predecessors were the folks that whole “character matters” in politics house of cards. Thanks for such a great piece and keep it up.

I find it really sad that our political discourse has devolved to the point where some people will defend even the worst behavior as long as the guy is “on their side.” I can’t say if it’s always been this way or not but it does seem particularly bad as of late. I hope things start going the other way, and soon.

I saw the Facebook post from Runner’s World when they first started looking into his claim. What shocked me most was the amount of people who were livid that Runner’s World would be “taking political sides.” So many people vowed to stop following Runner’s World or buying the magazine. If they had read the whole article, they would have seen that Runner’s World was talking about the accomplishment (at that time in question, but not debunked) and comparing Ryan to other politicians, such as Gore, Bush, Palin, and Kerry, that have also run marathons. They simply read the headline and were offended. However, I suspect that many were (and still are) subconsciously embarrassed that Ryan keeps getting caught in lies and it was easier to lashed out at Runner’s World than change their perception of their political representative.

Preach!
And to the commenter who called Ryan a pathological liar, you’re spot on. What a shockingly bold (and stupid) thing to lie about. It’s like he can’t help himself; every time he opens his mouth you’ve got to brace yourself for a lie. There’s always at least one.